in the desert. week one.

so i’ve been here a week as of today. so far its good. i’m a little tired, but so far its been a great day off. a little exercise, a little swimming, a little shopping (for a vest…[kind of a long story]), and a little relaxing.

this first week has been pretty much dominated by hanging out and meeting new people and seeing friends (old people, meaning people that are not new to me, not necessarily people that have been alive for a time spanning long enough to be considered “old”) and observing/learning things.

***does anyone have a polaroid camera they would want to loan me?***

here are some of the highights of my first week. in a blurry/bad phone camera pictorial form.

so this weekend, i spent the services running around backstage and such.

this is the video control room. i sat here and watched all the cameras and buttons and such go crazy. it was like a tv station. completely awesome.

this is the view from what is front of house (hereforth called “FOH”). all the sound and lights are commanded from here. ridiculous. but awesome.

this is the view of the stage from backstage. granted, it was practice early on sunday morning…but pretty awesome no less.

this is the incredibly bad picture of the stage from the back of the room. from the “cheap seats”. i might be the only one to call it that…so, don’t get confused if when referring to the back as the “cheap seats” you get weird looks. it’ll just be our little club.

okay this picture deserves context. after church, my boss, andy the music pastor (hereforth referred to as “andy” or “ATMP”) asked me “do you want to go to the diamondbacks game? I replied with “yes, and when?”. he said “right now” and i thought “boy howdy!” so about 10 minutes later i’m in ATMP’s truck with duke, one of the vocalists from the weekend services, and we are handed tickets and are driving downtown to chase field, home of the arizona diamondbacks. these tickets are in the owner’s box. across the stairway aisle thing is sitting the freaking owner of the daimondbacks and his family. the tickets are worth more than i feel comfortable publishing on the internet. but…wow. to go from college dorm life to this…is quite the jump. ridiculous!

this is the tunnel that is located down a few stairs which is located about 10 feet from my seat at chase field the home of the arizona diamondbacks. down the tunnel behind me is the bathroom. the bathroom is on the left. to the right is a cop who asked me what i was doing. i said “bathroom?” and he pointed me to the left. to the right and past the armed cop was the diamondback’s clubhouse. awesome.

this is russel eating bannanas and apples babyfood. he said it’s good. i disagree. its like applesauce with less texture.

summertime…

right now, i’m sitting in my hebrews class. and it is sunny outside and it is warm and summer couldn’t come sooner. one reason is that spending the summer learning and working and being crazy busy actually sounds like a good time. and in phoenix, no less.

here is another.

so its not that i’m against twitter or facebook. i don’t preach their evils or really talk about how great they are. i like to think i keep it in perspective (i hope…) but…

first was xanga…where you type your thoughts in paragraphs and such that you hope people will think is cool, and in high school was soooo much fun. (eprops anyone?)

then(/still) is facebook…where things are more diverse. there are walls to write on, and all kinds of apps and its great, but its shorter and less work than the xanga.

now, twitter is growing. it is the fastest, easiest, smallest slice of self-reporting yet.

we’ve gone from xanga to facebook to twitter, and getting smaller and shorter, and more networked the whole time. but…what’s next?

can we get shorter than 140 characters? of course we can, but what comes next? binary code? emoticons? one word descriptions?

what’s next?

so here’s the deal.  a few kind people are asking me to update this blog. the only problem is that i don’t really have much to say at the moment. which is funny because plenty of things are happening…

let me start with this evening.

brown shoes

these are the shoes that i wear when i don’t feel like putting on black dress shoes. they are the nicest pair that i own that aren’t formal or sneakers…they are brown and just dressy enough to make me feel okay in nice settings.

red book

this a book that i won. what i am told is that the faculty at the music school at kansas state university voted me in as the outstanding sophomore music major. (i like to think of it as student of the month, which i never got in grade school. so this is a nice bit of catching up.) this is a process where one gets to make a somewhat awkward walk down an aisle in the center of a room while people politely clap. once at the front of the room, you get a firm, but kind handshake and are given a certificate and red book. this is that book.

spice v8?

this is a holdover picture from spring break. over the break, i went to a magical land called phoenix. its hot there even in march, which is almost ridiculous, but also almost heavenly. right as we were leaving phoenix (that would be kai, eric, ryan, and i) we stopped at quiktrip (qt). qt is amazing. it has thousands of drinks and it might be the best thing in the world for getting gasoline and a drink at the same time. anyways, i was looking for a drink (at 7 in the morning, no less) and i saw this. i don’t know how v8 can be spicy, but it seem kind of odd to me. granted, i like spicy things, but v8 is weird enough on its own. but spicy tomato juice…too much.

i have to say it was a good day

today will be good. i can feel it.

-eric schneider

so as a bible college student, i study the bible alot. and by this i mean to say that i read scripture and dissect the text and pull out ideas and take pieces and craft services and papers around scripture. however, this leads to a heady knwoledge of the bibe, and its too easy to forget that it is a very personal, amazing thing that God stepped down to earth and gave us himself and his word.

i am also a music student. i study music. i study how music works, spend a good amount of time playing, writing, and thinking about music. i manipulate it into pieces to make you feel certain emotions. i know that take a certain group of three notes and put a rhythm to it can make you feel happy or quite unsettled depending on how i choose to present those notes to you. (for example, right now phil wickham is playing through my roomate’s itunes application. phil’s voice is high and loud, and i am feeling it!)

both of these things are fine. however, when you take things, like scripture and music, that hold meaning to and are held tightly by people on a very personal level, you start disconnecting yourself from it. when you dissect music, you learn alot about it, but it won’t move you in the same way it did, if you’re not careful. (this is just as true, if not more regarding scripture)

but out of all of this, i have been fighting to still feel all of this. and here is what i found/heard/read a while back.

when Jesus was in the upper room with his disciples, they ate and then they sang. they sang a hymn. this, by experts, has been said to be a a group of psalms called the “hallel”. it is made up of psalms 113-118, which was customary to sing at the passover meal (the one they were celebrating). and over and over again this passage declares that “the Lord is good, and His love endures forever”.

this is significant. as stated earlier, music can make you feel things. and on the the night before He died, Christ sang a song declaring how good and loving His father is. when a truth that profound meets a melody, it brings comfort, i believe. and maybe at that moment Christ needed comfort. maybe at that moment Christ needed to not just know, but feel that everything was going to be alright, that God still had things under control.

this makes Jesus just a little more accessible to me, a little more tangible knowing that he needed comfort and hope, even from something as simple as a melody.

this is new

i have had blogs before. i have had a xanga, and blogspot, and some other things. but this, this will be good. here we go. i would like to apologize at the front of things to say that this may not be entertaining, or really fun, or good. but it will be healthy and hilarious. that is all.